Former DPP legislator Chou Po-lun's (
From a judicial perspective, Chou's sentencing is not a matter of political influence leading to a wrongful sentence. His accusation that five Supreme Court judges handed down their ruling without a careful review, his request for an extraordinary re-trial and a farewell party to see him off to jail were nothing more than an attempt to create a political future for himself once he gets out of jail. None of these things will have an impact on the justness of the judiciary.
Chou is one of the few serving legislators to be convicted and sent to jail in the past decade or so -- although he lost his seat last month when he was found guilty. During the KMT-era, the only ones to go to jail were former legislators Huang Hsin-chieh (
But Chou has been closely associated with President Chen Shui-bian (
But Chou is not the only leading light of the DPP to face legal problems because of corruption allegations. Yu Chen Yueh-ying (
In the KMT era the judiciary was always a political tool. The KMT leadership even allowed some politicians to get away after they were implicated in corruption cases. Former legislator Wu Tse-yuan (
The actions of the DPP administration, in contrast, have been a major improvement in terms of judicial independence. The party demanded Chou respect the judiciary's ruling while Yu Chen resigned as senior advisor to the president as soon as she was indicted.
The DPP was elected because the people resented the KMT's legacy of corruption. In the three years of DPP rule, there have been corruption cases at both the central and local government levels, such as the vote-buying scandal in the Kaohsiung City Council speaker's election. But the DPP has tried hard to avoid falling into the "black gold" quagmire. So far it has managed to keep itself clean fairly well -- despite allegations from opposition politicians.
Eradication of corruption and self-discipline will be key issues in next year's presidential election. Candidates who cannot rid themselves of "black gold" tar will not win the support of voters.
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
A recent scandal involving a high-school student from a private school in Taichung has reignited long-standing frustrations with Taiwan’s increasingly complex and high-pressure university admissions system. The student, who had successfully gained admission to several prestigious medical schools, shared their learning portfolio on social media — only for Internet sleuths to quickly uncover a falsified claim of receiving a “Best Debater” award. The fallout was swift and unforgiving. National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Taipei Medical University revoked the student’s admission on Wednesday. One day later, Chung Shan Medical University also announced it would cancel the student’s admission. China Medical
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